What is Dressage? Or perhaps more specifically, what do people say it is? I’m wondering if I will ever exhaust the subject. I doubt it, because the more I read the more I realize how understated is the concept of infinity. I used to ponder the universe. The big-bang theory attempts to explain the existence of matter, the universe; in fact, all that there is, or ever was, or ever will be. Einstein’s theory of relativity or E=MC² is so simple when compared to the theories of dressage.

     Allow me to quote some of what I have found on the Internet on the subject.  I found a simple straightforward definition. “Dressage is one of the three Olympic equestrian disciplines.”  I’d have to say that this definition is perhaps not sufficient to completely define the word “Dressage”.  So let’s see if we can find a more inclusive definition:

  "It is a programme of suppling, balancing and obedience work that prepares a horse for future pleasure-riding or competition, Western or English. One of the most popular horse sports, "combined training", includes a dressage test as part of the competition format."

  “programme” ? I'm not from Great Britain nor can I read or write a foreign language but it seems to me to be saying that dressage is not "pleasure-riding or even competitive.

Perhaps the reason it’s so hard to define dressage is that you end up reading words that you can’t look up in any dictionary. Consequently it’s every man or woman for him or herself. [From now on when I use the word “man” you can define it as “manorwoman”. If “dressage” can be defined in make believe words, then I guess I can make up words also.

In the modern world, dressage has two correct meanings: (1) the basic schooling of every riding horse. Under the guise of “flat work”, it is what hunter/jumper trainers do with their horses when they are not schooling over fences. (2) a type of rapidly growing competition, open to virtually every kind and size of horse and any age of rider.

As for rapidly growing, it’s more like a vanishing art. And as for it’s being for every kind of horse, talk to the man who just paid one million dollars for a “dressage” horse. I’m not even going to comment on what hunter/jumper trainers are doing but even I know it ain’t dressage.  I wanted to find a better definition so I kept looking. I found one that I liked. It’s a bit long, but then so are some dressage horses in the collected movements. This definition is meant to help those horses:  

The idea is to gradually enable the horse to carry more of his own and his rider's weight over his hindquarters than over his forehand. This mobilizing and strengthening of the hindquarters (which provide the motive power as if the horse had rear wheel drive) results in lightening of the forehand and a horse that is much easier to steer and to stop. 

     This definition is more to my liking since it acknowledges that a horse is not doing dressage until he has that “rear wheel drive” and light in the forehand.  On a scale of 1 to 10 however, I wonder where this requirement stands as compared to the big flamboyant mover with the bouncing/trailing rear end? It’s just a fleeting thought however.  In the end, I’m still not completely satisfied with this definition. It has a certain ring to it, but then it is deficient in intellectual complexity, and convolution that entails concentration-engendering trepidation.  I surfed until I found one worthy of consideration.  

Baucherism..addresses directly giving the horse the proper position, i.e., the proper balance, i.e., the proper lightness (balance and lightness are synonymous in Baucherism; the one cannot come without the other being realized), and this beforehand, prior to any action. Large and spectacular gaits are the end result of a careful training which is based on an uncompromising demand for lightness as a prerequisite to any evolution. Movement should never be accepted in the absence of lightness. When lightness is lost, so is true balance, and the movement should be interrupted at once, lightness re-established through the proper means (yield-relaxation of the jaw), and then movement should resume. (Only with a horse well advanced in his training can lightness be restored within the movement.)

     I’m still not satisfied. It’s complicated, that’s true; but then, I need to find something more mysterious, and cryptic. I needed to find the ultimate meaning of the word “dressage.” Nothing short of esoteric Aristotelian thought of the pre-enlightenment would suffice. I thought I had found it in the next quote:  

The basic point is that riding a horse is an extremely valid situation. Even in the sutras, if we might quote them, the horse is often referred to as exertion or virya. Exertion is always like riding a horse. Exertion is never regarded as just wearing oneself out, but exertion is regarded as riding on the energy that exists.

         I think it was the word “virya” that made me believe that I had found the Holy Grail definition of dressage. But then I realized that no one I’ve ever known referred to his or her horse as “virya”, but that’s not surprising because I've never known anyone who could quote the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.  I was almost going to give up when the thought occurred to me that there was still one stone that I had not looked under: the zen stone.  Surely there one would find the true meaning of dressage. After an exhaustive search I stumbled upon the most - well how can I put it?  

A master dressage artist can enter a state of awareness in which the right physical movement takes place by itself, without any interference of the conscious will. Dressage rides the dressage. Nothing is done because the rider has vanished into the ride; the fuel has been completely transformed into the flame. We are able to relinquish control in this manner when we trust Universal Mind. The ecuyer masters dressage, not by conquering, but by becoming it.